The Role of the Oceans in Southern Hemisphere Climate

Atmospheric circulation is strongly influenced by details of the sea surface temperature. In many parts of the World Ocean, SST is fairly well approximated by a one-dimensional local balance, in which (at least on long-term mean) the SST adjusts locally until the losses due to latent and sensible heat and longwave radiation balance the incident shortwave radiation. There are large parts of the World Ocean, however, for which ocean currents affect SST quite strongly. Ocean currents connect regions of heat gain to regions of heat loss; heat gained from the atmosphere may be stored for many years and carried thousands of kilometers before being returned to the atmosphere. These currents are driven by the atmosphere, through surface winds or buoyancy fluxes. Thus, the atmosphere and the ocean interact strongly on one another, and the coupled system cannot be understood by considering either component in isolation. The aim of this chapter is to describe some of the physics underlying the observed patterns of sea surface temperature and heat flux, with an emphasis on the Southern Hemisphere. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.